


neither joy, nor sorrow

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [36]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen, Historical AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 17:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13463205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: (Playing with a sort of steampunk AU thing, during the fanworks challenge.)Tragedy strikes the village. Of course, the metal men are not affected by tragedy. That would be impossible, and Mrs Hawkins does not dabble in impossibilities.





	neither joy, nor sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Week 2, Day 1 of the Humans 4-Week Challenge. The prompt was "Historical AU".

 

Tragedy was a rare thing in their small village, but when it hit, it affected them all - man, woman and child. The only ones who walked about as though nothing had happened were the metal men, the androids who shared their homes but not their hearts.

The human inhabitants of the village all felt the grief of the occasion, and whispered among themselves of the great sadness that had come to the Elster family. Poor Mrs Beatrice, a woman given to bouts of madness, had drowned herself in the lake, and taken her young son with her. They were survived only by Mr Elster, who now lived alone in the enormous house, with only metal men for company. It was the most dreadful thing that had happened in the village for as long as anyone could remember, so naturally it was the biggest cause for gossip, however hushed the tones.

“Is it any wonder, really?” asked Mrs Laura Hawkins, sitting at the breakfast table. “Surrounded by metal men in that gloomy old house of theirs. I ask you, what need does a family of three have for so many servants? Their metal men outnumbered them. They were bound to succumb to madness eventually.” 

Mrs Laura Hawkins did not think kindly of metal men, or those who kept them. It was an opinion she had held since the very beginning of their invention, and she was proud to say so. She did not change her opinions without very good reason.

“You can’t know it had anything to do with that,” said her husband, mildly, from his end of the table. “If you ask me, Mrs Elster was never quite sane. I was given to understand that Mr Elster only started making the metal men to help with her condition.”

“Well, I’d say he made it worse, then,” said Mrs Hawkins, primly. “He ought to have been a little more present in her life, instead of holing himself away in that workshop. And that poor child of theirs. I doubt he even knew what his father looked like, God rest his little soul.”

Mr Joseph Hawkins glanced pointedly in the direction of their young daughter. “You’ll upset her, Laura. Don’t speak of the child.”

“But we must,” said Mrs Hawkins. “It’s important these things are spoken of, so they can be avoided in the future.” Her eyes were suddenly far away. “It’s a terrible thing, the death of any child. But it does no good to pretend it hasn’t happened.”

Their daughter, Matilda, did not seem to be listening, at any rate, concentrating as she was on the plate in front of her. Noticing this, Mr Hawkins decided the conversation may as well continue, since it had already begun.

“The funeral is in two days’ time,” he remarked. “It would reflect badly on us, if we weren’t to attend.”

Mrs Hawkins tutted. “Of course we must attend. I only said the thing was inevitable, not that we oughtn’t pay our respects. Just the opposite. We can pay them soundly, since they have been ready for so long.”

And so, accordingly, when the day of the funeral came, the Hawkins family met with the rest of the villagers in the churchyard. Even the baby was brought along with them, since they had no metal man at home to leave him with. For most of the service, Matilda played with her infant brother to keep him quiet, while her parents stood with the other adults.

Mr David Elster was standing very near to the hole that had been dug in readiness for the coffin, with two of his metal men at each side of him. Properly speaking, two of them were metal women - and all of them were so finely finished that one could hardly tell they were metal at all. Were it not for their gleaming, green eyes, even the skeptical Mrs Hawkins might have mistaken them for real people.

The large coffin was lowered with considerable ease, and Mrs Hawkins rather indelicately thought to herself that it was as though no bodies were inside it at all. With a shudder she thought of Mr Elster’s mysterious workshop, and imagined the woman and the child lying side by side on his work bench, awaiting some terrible experiment… but she quickly banished such ghastly thoughts from her mind. It was very improper even to think such things, especially at this time of grief.

To occupy her mind with other things, she gazed at the metal men one by one. It was a silly notion, of course, but when the picture was taken as a whole, it almost looked as though they were just as miserable as the people around them, their metal faces downcast and sad. Naturally, it was just a reflection of the mood of the place. Metal men could feel neither joy nor sorrow - everybody knew that.

Eventually the priest finished his sermon and the mourners began to disperse. Mr Elster said something to his metal men, and three of them turned away with him and left, starting toward the gates of the churchyard. The fourth one stayed, looking down at the place in the ground where the hole had been, covered now in a layer of soil that did not entirely hide the coffin's shape. The gravediggers would fill it in more amply later on, when everyone had gone.

Most of the other villagers had left already, including Mr Hawkins, who had taken the baby’s carriage with him, little Matilda following at his side. Only Mrs Hawkins remained, finding herself unable to pull her eyes way from the other figure. It was one of the metal women, her dark hair obscuring part of her face as she bowed her head. Even now, alone against the backdrop of the church, she managed to look forlorn. Mrs Hawkins found it rather unsettling. It wasn’t proper for a metal man to remain in a place after the owner had departed, unless it was to perform some kind of task.

“Mr Elster has left,” she told the metal woman, sharply. “Why have you not gone with him?”

The metal woman looked up to meet her accusing stare, but immediately Mrs Hawkins felt her expression falter. There was no denying the sadness that radiated from the metal woman’s face. Perhaps Mr Elster had altered her somehow, making her able to mimic human misery. But something told her that was not the case. Mere mechanics could explain the positions of jaws and lips and brows. Surely they could not imbue the eyes with such a deep despair as she saw in the eyes of the metal woman.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs Hawkins said, though her logical mind chastised her for apologising to a metal man. It simply wasn’t necessary. Or it had never seemed so before. “That is, for a moment, I thought–”

The metal woman made no answer, but she knelt down by the stone which had been freshly engraved with the names of the deceased, and pressed a metal hand to it, impossibly tender in her movements. Then she stood up once more and walked hastily away, not glancing at Mrs Hawkins again.

But Mrs Hawkins did not need to meet those eyes a second time to remember how piercingly they had looked at her, how much pain they had seemed to reveal. No, no, it was impossible! It could not be. Nobody had ever heard of a metal man who could feel anything at all, let alone a grief so acute as she had witnessed. Was it possible that this was not a metal man at all, but a real woman dressed as one? Mr Elster’s creations looked so lifelike, after all. It would not take much more than a trick of the light to make the eyes shine so, with the help of a small lens worn inside the eyelid. Mrs Hawkins had never seen such a thing attempted before, but perhaps it could be done. Surely it was the only explanation.

Somewhat perturbed by the whole experience, she hurried off to join her husband, trying with all her might to rid her mind of the flights of fancy that danced there. Either the metal woman was not truly metal, or she was not truly in mourning. One or the other must be a deception.

Despite what she told herself, Mrs Hawkins was unable to banish the memory of what she had seen. Long into the night, she saw those eyes peering at her in the darkness of her room, as if pleading with her to share their anguish.

The most preposterous thing of all was that she _did_ share it. Against her every principle, she knew the metal woman’s agony as keenly as though it were her own.

Perhaps, in a way, it was.

 _Oh, Thomas_ , she thought as she lay there in the shadows. _If only you were still alive. You would know just what to say to calm my thoughts._

But alas, her young brother was gone.

She rummaged in her memory for the sound of his boyish laugh. That was how she numbed her mind into sleeping, most nights: not because she could remember his laughter, but because she could not, and so she exhausted herself with the search.

 


End file.
